Dying
gods: Mt Kenya’s disappearing glaciers spread violence below

Those
who rely on Mount Kenya’s glaciers for water have turned against
one another as the rivers fed by the mountain dry up

3
August, 2017

Mwangi
Gitaru remembers his childhood well. He remembers the childhood
games. He remembers the songs he and his friends used to sing while
tending family goats. He remembers the stream that ran across his
father’s parcel of land, cutting it in half.

But
most importantly, Gitaru remembers how each day his grandfather would
wake up and face Mount Kenya and pray.

“He
believed the mountain was the source of life,” Gitaru says. “At
that time, its whole peak was white as cotton wool. We were told as
young boys, that was where the gods were. And we believed it.”

From
the snow-capped mountain came folklore; came tales of bravery and
bounty handed down from generation to generation. But more
importantly, from the glaciers near the summit, which rises to more
than 5,000m above sea level, came streams that fed into bigger
streams that fed into rivers that gave life to everything that lay
around the mountain; including Gitaru, his neighbours in Karatina
region, friends and some enemies too.

Gitaru
belongs to the Kikuyu tribe, Kenya’s most populous according to the
most recent census. The Kikuyu refer to the mountain as Kirinyaga
(Mountain of Whiteness) and traditionally revere it as home to their
omnipotent deity Ngai. But lately, the deity appears to have forsaken
them.

“The
ice is melting away. The rivers flowing from the glaciers are not as
full as they used to be. Some have dried up. And this is causing
conflict downhill,” Kenyan environmentalist and chairman of Kenya’s
Water Towers Management Authority Isaac Kalua says.

The
United Nations Environment Programme estimates that only 10 of the 18
glaciers that covered the mountain’s summit a century ago remain,
leaving less than one third of the previous ice cover. The Lewis
Glacier, the largest on Mt Kenya, has decreased by 90% in volume
since 1934, with the highest rates of ice volume loss occurring
around the turn of the century.

“When
the melting starts, rivers first experience high flows because of the
melting ice,” says Kalua. “But this subsequently reduces because
the glaciers never really recover like they did before climate change
became a reality. Because of this, there is less and less water in
the rivers in the years that follow.”

Kenya,
like many African countries is highly vulnerable to climate change
because of its exposure to increasing temperatures and rainfall
variability and its dependence on agriculture.

“Any
change in anything that could affect this subsistence agriculture
almost always ends in conflict,” Kalua says.

Forty-five
year-old Albert Lesiyan knows this too well. In April of 2017, he and
group of four cousins drove close to a thousand cows from their
ancestral home in Laresoro, a village in the Samburu region, and
moved them north towards Nanyuki town, much closer to Mt Kenya.

“Our
cows had nothing to eat. Even if it were you, would you let your cow
die yet there is grass somewhere near?” he asks, briefly chewing on
a grass stalk.

But
there was a problem. Nanyuki town is some 70 kilometres from his
village. And the grass they had been told about, grew on private
land.

“We
cut the fence and drove our cattle in,” he says. Their timing
couldn’t have been worse.

Early
March, herders had shot and killed Sosian Ranch co-owner Tristan
Voorspuy while he was inspecting a burnt lodge in the expansive
24,000-acre ranch. The region had been battling mass invasions,
violence and vandalism by herders that drove away tourists, investors
and caused job losses.

A
week prior to Lesiyan moving into the ranch, a different group of
herders shot renowned author and conservationist Kuki Gallmann at her
100,000-acre Laikipia Nature Conservancy ranch. (She survived).

As
soon as Lesiyan and his group drove their cattle in, the ranch owner
called the police who launched an operation to drive them out of the
vast farm.

“They
didn’t listen to us. They started shooting. More than 100 of our
cows were confiscated. Three of us were shot and wounded. We were not
bothering anyone. We just wanted our cows to have something to eat,”
he said.

Lesiyan’s
home is dry. The ground looks thirsty. Every step you take kicks up a
cloud of dust. Nearby, children play with sand in a dry river bed.

The
drainage pattern from the Mt Kenya’s glaciers is radial. Despite
this though, all streams eventually end up as tributaries to one of
two rivers; The Tana River, that runs tirelessly south and eventually
into the Indian Ocean and the more sporadic Ewaso Ng’iro in the
country’s eastern lowlands.

Kenya’s
food crisis: Drought raises prices and political tensions

“My
father tells me when he was young, even elephants could not cross
this river. Now our children play in its stomach,” Lesiyan says,
looking on at the children playing in the river bed of the Ewaso
Ng’iro.

This
time next year, Lesiyan might be staring at the same options that
sent him north in the first place.

“The
pastoralists will continue to have it rough. During the drought, the
land remained bare because of overgrazing. When the rains came, all
the top soil was washed away in the flash floods, it will take months
for grass to grow again and these conflicts will continue,” Francis
Karin, a climate change and food security expert said. “And the
water from up the mountain no longer trickles down to them.”

He
said even the reduced water coming down the mountain is heavily
dammed by the nearby farming communities.

“The
future of those further downhill looks bleak,” Karin said.

Kalua
says the continued melting of the Mt Kenya glacier can only make
things worse for the communities living around it.

“We
cannot do anything about it,” he says. “It is not our problem. We
are not responsible for the massive emissions responsible for global
glacial melts. But we are suffering the consequences.”

For
Felix Kathune, the consequences are a continual lack of sleep. The
redness of his eyes tells the story.

“I
have not slept for two days,” he says. “If I do, they will bring
their cows and let them loose in our farms,” he says.

He
lives in Kathekakai, a village 110km north of Gitaru’s own and
right beneath the mountain.

“They
are lurking… waiting for us to sleep then bring their cows and
goats to eat our cabbages and maize,” he says.

He,
like many of his neighbours in nearby Nkothima village, stay awake to
prevent members from the neighbouring pastoralist Borana community
from feeding their crops to the animals.

“They
say their river is dried up and they need to come through our farms
to access our river. But when they do this, they set their cows into
our farms and we are left with nothing,” he says.

He
does not believe that the river the Borana’s used to go to is all
dried up.

“They
are just pretending. They just want our crops,” he says.

But
the River Liki, which stretches from the northern side of the
mountain and was traditionally depended on by the Boranas, no longer
flows all year round.

“It
has now become seasonal. Running for only 8 months of the year,”
water manager Kalua said. “It is during these months that conflict
between the Meru and Borana communities flares up.”

Before
a mountain hiker gets to the fast disappearing glaciers of Mt Kenya,
they will go through a succession of distinctive, elevation-based
vegetation zones. The grasslands first, then at about 6,000 feet he
will meet a ring of dense forest covering the slopes up to about
10,000 feet.

Then
the slightly ticklish scent of cedar and yellowwood. From 8,000 feet,
with the air getting thinner and thinner, one would walk into a row
of bamboo forest that noticeably become shorter as you go higher. At
12,000 feet, a moor. The ground becomes slippery due to the moss and
lichen covering the ground. Then at 15,000 feet the glaciers announce
their majesty in between bare rock, slate and ice, sitting on top of
the mountain like icing on a massive cake.

In
1893, the famous British geologist John W Gregory led the first
scientific expedition up Mt Kenya but could not make it past the ice
glaciers to reach the summit.

Now,
the climb and descent to the highest mountain peak and one of two
remaining glacier capped mountains in East and Central Africa takes a
total of five days.

“If
I were to kneel and pray facing Mt Kenya, my children will think I am
growing mad,” Gitaru, the farmer from the little village in Nyeri
says. “Very many things have changed in very little time,” says
the 73- year- old, the sun setting behind the god of his forefathers,
whose disappearance has turned neighbours against one another.